in which the change took place was
characteristic. It was not by missionaries from beyond the Weald in
Kent or Surrey, nor from beyond the marsh in Wessex. An Irish monk,
Baeda tells us, coming ashore on the open coast near Chichester,
established a small monastery at Bosham--even then, no doubt, a royal
_ham_, as we know it was under Harold--'a place,' says the old
historian significantly, 'girt round by sea and forest.' (It lies just
on the mark between Wessex and the South Saxons.) AEthelwealh, the
king--a curious name, for it means 'noble Welshman' (perhaps he was of
mixed blood)--had already been baptized in Mercia, and his wife was the
daughter of a Christian ealdorman of the Worcester-men; but the rest of
the principality was heathen. The Irish monk effected nothing; but
shortly after Wilfrith, the fiery Bishop of York, on one of his usual
flying visits to Rome, got shipwrecked off Selsea. With his accustomed
vigour, he went ashore, and began a crusade in the heathen land. He was
able at once to baptize the 'leaders and soldiers'--that is to say, the
free military English population; while his attendant priests--Eappa,
Padda, Burghelm, and Oiddi (it is pleasant to preserve these little
personal touches)--proceeded to baptize the 'plebs'--that is to say,
the servile Anglicised Celt-Euskarian substratum--up and down the
country villages.

It was to Wilfrith, too, that Sussex owed her first cathedral.
AEthelwealh made him a present of Selsea, 'a place surrounded by the sea
on every side save one, where an isthmus about as broad as a
stone's-throw connects it with the mainland,' and there the ardent
bishop founded a regular monastery, in which he himself remained for
five years. On the soil were 250 serfs, whom Wilfrith at once set free.
After the death of Aldhelm, the West Saxon bishop, in 709, Sussex was
made a separate bishopric, with its seat at Selsea; and it was not till
after the Norman Conquest that the cathedral was removed to Chichester.
It may be noted that all these arrangements were in strict accordance
with early English custom. The kings generally gave their bishops a
seat near their own chief town, as Cuthbert had his see at Lindisfarne,
close to the royal Northumbrian capital of Bamborough; so that the
proximity of Selsea to Chichester made it the most natural place for a
bishopstool; and, again, it was usual to make over spots in the fens or
marshes to the monks, who, by draining and cultivating the